For example, if fraud is in the first instance profitable to him who has recourse to it, in the long-run it is more frequently fatal to him; for it injures his credit, his honour, and his reputation. It creates around him distrust and suspicion. It is, besides, always hurtful to the man who is the victim of it. Finally, it alarms society, and obliges it to employ part of its force in expensive precautions. The sum of evil, then, far exceeds the sum of good. This is what constitutes natural Responsibility, which acts constantly as a preventive and repressive check. We can understand, however, that the community does not choose to depend altogether on the slow action of necessary responsibility, and judges it fit to add a legal sanction to the natural sanction. In [p481] that case, we may say that the legal sanction is only the natural sanction organized and reduced to rule. It renders punishment more immediate and more certain; it gives more publicity and authenticity to facts; it surrounds the suspected party with guarantees, and affords him a regular opportunity to exculpate himself if there be room for it; it rectifies the errors of public opinion, and calms down individual vengeance by substituting for it public retribution. In fine—and this perhaps is the essential thing—it does not destroy the lessons of experience.
We cannot, then, say that the legal sanction is illogical in principle, when it advances alongside the natural sanction and concurs in the same result. It does not follow, however, that the legal sanction ought in every case to be substituted for the natural sanction, and that human law is justified by the consideration alone that it acts in the sense of Responsibility.
The artificial distribution of punishments and rewards includes in itself, and at the expense of the community, an amount of inconvenience which it is necessary to take into account. The machinery of the legal sanction comes from men, is worked by men, and is costly.
Before submitting an action or a habit to organized repression, there is always this question to be asked:—
Does the excess of good which is obtained by the addition of legal repression to natural repression compensate the evil which is inherent in the repressive machinery?
In other words, is the evil of artificial repression greater or less than the evil of impunity?
In the case of theft, of murder, of the greater part of crimes and delicts, the question admits of no doubt. Every nation of the earth represses these crimes by public force.
But when we have to do with a habit which it is difficult to account for, and which may spring from moral causes of delicate appreciation, the question is different, and it may very well be that, although this habit is universally esteemed hurtful and vicious, the law should remain neuter, and hand it over to natural responsibility.
In the first place, this is the course which the law ought to take in the case of an action or a habit which is doubtful, which one part of the population thinks good and another part bad. You think me wrong in following the Catholic ritual; I think you wrong in adopting the Lutheran faith. Let God judge of that. Why should I aim a blow at you, or why should you aim a blow [p482] at me? If it is not right that we should strike at each other, how can it be right that we should delegate a third party, the depositary of the public force, to chastise one of us for the satisfaction of the other?
You allege that I am wrong in teaching my child the moral and natural sciences; I believe that you are wrong in teaching your child Greek and Latin exclusively. Let us act on both sides according to our feeling of what is right. Let our families be acted on by the law of Responsibility. That law will punish the one who is wrong. Do not invoke human law, which may punish the one who is right.